


Wash Me Away

by AcceleratedStall



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 02:37:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15500460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcceleratedStall/pseuds/AcceleratedStall
Summary: Waking Cloud tries to understand the man she's to scout Zion Valley with.





	Wash Me Away

Of course Waking Cloud had agreed to perform the scouting of Zion Valley with this courier from the West. She owed it to Daniel after all he’d done for her and the Sorrows, and going alone didn’t feel right anymore, not when she had a family to return to. She told herself that it didn’t matter who the courier even was.

They meet at the south end of the Narrows, by one of the campfires. Waking Cloud knows that her new scouting partner isn’t one of the Sorrows or Dead Horses, but that doesn’t tell her what he _is_ , and the man himself seems little inclined to give her any hints. His eyes are hidden by opaque mirrored glasses, and a wide-brimmed hat is pulled low over his head; his expression suggests nothing in particular.

“Let’s go,” he says, and they do.

Waking Cloud hears no further words from the Courier for at least three hours. To fill the silence she occasionally offers a softly spoken remark on Zion and its people to a man who is said to be unfamiliar with them, but mostly she just watches him like a hawk.

The Sorrows dress lightly to walk lightly. “Let nothing come between you and the land; it will grant you its secrets,” say their shamans, with decades of knowledge and experience giving their words the ring of finality. The Courier clearly hasn’t heard them; his steps are firm in heavy leather boots, and underneath a long jacket he’s covered most of his body in some kind of armor, marked with faded, illegible back-when symbols.

Yet it doesn’t seem to matter. Heavy pack strapped to his shoulders, the Courier crosses the valley the way a leaf floats down the Virgin River in the autumn. He passes White Leg scouting bands unnoticed, communicating to Waking Cloud with silent gestures and nods, and while the Bighorners and Yao Guai must surely smell them both, they never attack. Waking Cloud and her new scouting partner arrive near the Old Rockville Bridge not just sooner than expected, but well stocked with supplies - they’ve needed none of their poultices and very little healing powder.

They watch the bridge from a distance, concealed atop a pile of stones. There are White Legs on both ends; Waking Cloud counts at least three on the west side of the span and three on the east.

She asks the Courier what he intends, and finally he speaks. “There’s not enough cover on the bridge to avoid being seen. If we’re going to check it for traps we’ll have to fight it out.” There’s no trace of enthusiasm, or even emotion, in his words, but something about his tone sounds familiar.

He takes his rifle off his back and checks the chamber. “Four of them have long guns; I’ll aim for them first. Keep to cover, but if any of them charge us with axes or fists, hit them before they hit me.”

Finally Waking Cloud places his voice in her mind. Though Daniel was the only one to stay, about half a dozen New Canaanites had passed through the Narrows after the death of their town - the Courier’s voice is theirs. Refugees, men consigned to wander, exhausted not physically but emotionally. Perhaps that’s who the Courier is, in spirit if not in fact.

There’s no more time to think. The Courier is poised to shoot; the first of the White Legs falls. The rest scatter in surprise and panic, but still ready their weapons, and everything falls to chaos. Waking Cloud’s mind lurches wildly back and forth from unbearable anticipation, to profound fear, to anger, to raw pain; some White Legs fall at a distance but others arrive, and charge up with axes and gauntlets to meet her fists. The piercing _crack_ of the Courier’s rifle and the strange, acrid taste of gunpowder on the air fill her head.

Waking Cloud throws a White Leg to the ground with a cry, and as she looks up, another is on the bridge. The White Leg raises her repeater, but a bullet from the Courier catches her in the calf - crying out something in her own tongue, she sinks to one knee. Another White Leg rushes towards her, and the Courier’s rifle cracks again - the would-be rescuer is dead on the bridge.

Only one White Leg is left, at the east end of the bridge. He turns and runs; the Courier raises his rifle one more time, and puts a shot through the man’s back. For a moment, the Courier stares, unfocused, at the battlefield. Waking Cloud watches as he murmurs “forgive me” at nobody.

They clear mines and bear traps around the bridge in silence. He’s not a refugee, Waking Cloud decides. The Courier is instead a second Burned Man, untouched by the flames - so far. As they begin the walk back north to the Narrows, Waking Cloud can only offer prayers for the both of them.

But even so… They’re returning to the Sorrows’ camp in the late afternoon, and Waking Cloud says idly “I am always a little sad to leave the Narrows, and happy to return.” She _knows_ she sees the courier nod in reply.

At the first campfire, where Daniel sits reading scripture, he turns to her. “Rest up a bit. Have to cook up some food and antivenom for the trip, but we need to reach Bighorn Bluff before sunrise tomorrow morning.” He continues further into the camp, but Waking Cloud feels compelled to follow him; even after walking with him for hours, the Courier remains a puzzle.

At the bottom of the path from the river up to the clifftops where most of the Sorrows sleep, the Courier selects a patch of dry ground and sets down his pack and rifle. For the first he time takes off his hat, revealing a scalp shaved bare and crisscrossed by scars. Maybe he and Waking Cloud are a little alike after all. He wades back into the water.

At the opposite side of the river from the path, a smaller stream drains into the Virgin River from above, forming a small waterfall whose spray hangs over the canyon. Its presence is welcome on summer days, when the mist helps cool down tired hunters and scouts, but with familiarity, the Sorrows have come to pay it little mind; a miracle of God’s creation, Daniel says, but nevertheless one that they see every day. She supposes it’s more of a novelty to the Courier, who seems to be staring at it, and slowly wading closer to the cascade.

He walks right into the thicker spray, clasping his hands together and pooling the falling water between them, almost reverently. Water spatters his clothes; he seems to pay no mind to it. He turns his head upward, and outstretches his arms. Suddenly he’s a different man from a different time and place. Joshua, reaching for the heavens.

The courier holds this pose for prolonged seconds, untroubled by Waking Cloud’s curious eyes - he has to know she’s just a few paces away. Then he begins to laugh - clear and joyful. It’s a sound that Waking Cloud hasn’t heard since the children of the Sorrows left the camp for their own safety, and she’d laugh with him if that thought didn’t make her want to weep. He laughs, and laughs, and the evening light turns drops of water into little gold-orange beads falling through the air.

Just a few seconds longer, and the sun is behind the clifftops. The courier emerges from the spray, dripping down to his boots. The moment, whatever it was, is past. Waking Cloud can only stare. She isn’t exactly sure what to ask, but he speaks before she can form a question.

“Ah! The water - it’s so _free_ here!” His voice is breathless and excited, the way it never was when they were fighting a White Leg scouting party earlier in the day.

“Pardon?”

“I guess you wouldn’t know, huh?” No, she certainly wouldn’t, but Waking Cloud says nothing.

“So long ago - back in the Mojave, back before the bombs - they took the whole Colorado River in their hands. And to this day they still haven’t let go. It’s like that with everything there, you know.” Back on dry land, he sits down on one end of a log, motions for her to sit, too. His previous voice, the tired, affectless one, was back, but the courier continued.

“It’s something about the desert, I guess. Water is never free. There’s fences and walls around it, hundreds of eyes watching it. It’s… another chip to be owned, bought, sold, and gambled away. Everyone and everything is. Do a job for a man, or even just a favor, and he thinks you’re his next pawn.”

He turns to her, and his voice rises again, yet wavers, like smoke on the breeze.

“But I came here because _I_ chose to. And here, I don’t have to search, I don’t have to pay, I don’t have to owe - the water just flows right down!”

The courier pauses again, and almost seems to shrink. “Well, that’s what it is, if it makes sense.”

“Perhaps,” Waking Cloud replies.

“It’s not about Graham or Daniel or returning to Vegas, not anymore. It's painful to admit to myself, but I know what I have to do now. I want to come back,” the courier tells her, “and see Zion as a place of peace like you said. Where the water is still free.”

**Author's Note:**

> The central idea has been in my head for a while, but the supporting framework was pretty hard to come up with; even so, I had to post this so I could write other things. This is probably going to embarrass the hell out of me later.


End file.
